Assessment of
laboratory/practical work
Description
The use
of a laboratory situation to assess aspects of a student’s work that may not appropriately
be assessed by regular paper-based tests. A wide variety of testing objectives
are possible and Brown, Bull and Pendlebury (1997) offer a long list of potential
objectives which may need to be included in assessment. As a result of deciding
what exactly it is that needs to be assessed, the teacher must decide whether
any simple paper-and-pencil test method is adequate, or whether the laboratory
needs to be the venue for assessment. Typically, students are required to
perform some experimental procedure, note the results and evaluate their
findings
Variations
Many,
including ‘dry practicals’, where the results of a laboratory experiment are presented
and students are required simply to analyse them and to evaluate and comment on
them. Group work is increasingly a feature of many undergraduate programmes,
reflecting the importance of collaboration skills as a course aim. But the
assessment of group work brings a variety of problems (Wood, 1991).
Marking
systems
These
vary, depending upon the approach. Main problems surround how to balance
assessment of process versus outcome/analysis/evaluation and standardizing this.
The classic science paradigm (methods, results, conclusion) may assist in
producing assessment criteria. Work in the assessment of medical students using
objective, standardized approaches may also be helpful (Harden and Gleeson,
1979).
Advantages
This
method allows assessment of a uniquely important aspect of many subjects,the ‘real
world’ of scientific enquiry.
Drawbacks
There
are practical difficulties towards making assessment equitable for all students:
what happens if a student’s experiment ‘goes wrong’. The cost of this method of
testing may be high. It is also difficult to determine assessment priorities (eg,
process versus outcome) and rewards.
Orals
Oral or viva
voce examinations, though commonly used in
professional and postgraduate assessment, are the subject of great concern to
test developers and psychometricians – especially when loosely described
criteria such as ‘sparkle’ are mentioned. Orals have their attractions, but are
subject to all the well-known biases and problems of selection interviews, and
should only be used in the full knowledge of these problems and how these
effects may be minimized. The new practitioner in higher education is
counselled to beware of and avoid orals, certainly until he or she has read
some of the literature (eg, Wakeford, Southgate and Wass, 1995).
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